Survey on voter turnout

Description

Turnout in elections is an indicator of the involvement of citizens in institutions
and major public debates.

By monitoring the behaviour of the people registered on the electoral lists between
two rounds of the same vote and between different successive votes, the surveys of
electoral participation are used to analyse this involvement in more in-depth fashion
than the analysis of the instant turnout rate trends published by the Interior Ministry.

These surveys are not only used to study participation according to different socio-demographic
criteria, but also to observe voting intermittence, by distinguishing between systematic
voters, systematic abstainers and more or less intermittent electors.

Initially conducted on a national basis, these operations are now based on samples
of a sufficient size in order to enable regional analyses.

History

A first survey of electoral participation was conducted in 1983 on an exploratory
basis during the municipal elections.

It was limited to the major municipalities of Metropolitan France (sample of less
than 3,000 people).

In 1984, the operation was repeated over the whole of Metropolitan France for the
European elections (sample of approximately 7,000 people).

In 1998, the programme monitored several successive elections for the first time:
1988 presidential and legislative elections, 1989 referendum on New Caledonia and
municipal elections. The panel featured approximately 8,000 people. It was used to
produce the first analyses on voting recurrence on a national level.

In 1995, a new panel was selected for the 1995 presidential election, the 1995 municipal
elections and the 1997 legislative elections. It featured nearly 39,000 people, which
enabled the first regional analyses.

This framework was then applied again in 2002-2004 (2002 presidential and legislative
elections, 2004 regional and European elections) then in 2007-2008 (2007 presidential
election and legislative elections, 2008 municipal elections).